ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your
passage through life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose
sight of it and you are lost!" Over and over again she sang this
burden in a small still voice, and so I left her. Then straightway
I came upon some butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to
believe in all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice
they rejected; thus, asserting themselves to be certain other and
hateful butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their
abominable smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness,
and live long in the land and see good days. No: lying is so
deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet
it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have
it always with us; we must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we
die.

All depends upon who it is that is lying. One man may steal a
horse when another may not look over a hedge. The good man who
tells no lies wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie
and lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people, and he will
not be false to any man: his lies become truths as they pass into
the hearers' ear. If a man deceives himself and is unkind, the
truth is not in him, it turns to falsehood while yet in his mouth,
like the quails in the Wilderness of Sinai. How this is so or why,
I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on whom He will have mercy
and whom He willeth He hardeneth.

My Italian friends are doubtless in the main right about the
priests, but there are many exceptions, as they themselves gladly
admit. For my own part I have found the curato in the small
subalpine villages of North Italy to be more often than not a